“If here isn’t Larry!” said Kate.

Morton’s face turned as black as thunder, but he immediately went back across the bridge, leading Mary with him.  The other girls, who had followed him on to the bridge, had of course to go back also.

Mary was made very unhappy by the meeting.  Mr. Morton would of course think that it had been planned, whereas by Mary herself it had been altogether unexpected.  Kate, when the bridge was free, rushed over it and whispered something to Larry.  The meeting had indeed been planned between her and Dolly and the lover, and this special walk had been taken at the request of the two younger girls.

Morton stood stock still, as though he expected that Twentyman would pass by.  Larry hurried over the bridge, feeling sure that the meeting with Morton had been accidental and thinking that he would pass on towards the house.

Larry was not at all ashamed of his purpose, nor was he inclined to give way and pass on.  He came up boldly to his love, and shook hands with her with a pleasant smile.  “If you are walking back to Dillsborough,” he said, “maybe you’ll let me go a little way with you?”

“I was going round the house with Mr. Morton,” she said timidly.

“Perhaps I can join you?” said he, bobbing his head at the other man.

“If you intended to walk back with Mr. Twentyman—­,” began Morton.

“But I didn’t,” said the poor girl, who in truth understood more of it all than did either of the two men.  “I didn’t expect him, and I didn’t expect you.  It’s a pity I can’t go both ways, isn’t it?” she added, attempting to appear cheerful.

“Come back, Mary,” said Kate; “we’ve had walking enough, and shall be awfully tired before we get home.”

Mary had thought that she would like extremely to go round the house with her old friend and have a hundred incidents of her early life called to her memory.  The meeting with Reginald Morton had been altogether pleasant to her.  She had often felt how much she would have liked it had the chance of her life enabled her to see more frequently one whom as a child she had so intimately known.  But at the moment she lacked the courage to walk boldly across the bridge, and thus to rid herself of Lawrence Twentyman.  She had already perceived that Morton’s manner had rendered it impossible that her lover should follow them.  “I am afraid I must go home,” she said.  It was the very thing she did not want to do,—­this going home with Lawrence Twentyman; and yet she herself said that she must do it,—­driven to say so by a nervous dread of showing herself to be fond of the other man’s company.

“Good afternoon to you,” said Morton very gloomily, waving his hat and stalking across the bridge.

CHAPTER VI

Not in Love